I am in total agreement with the concept that celebrities need a certain amount of privacy, but I also agree that people eating in a restaurant have their basic rights also.

On August 7, Page Six of the New York Post reported that when Mrs. Obama and her two daughters stopped at Spike Mendelsohn‘s Good Stuff Eatery in DC for cheeseburgers, the cell phones were confiscated from patrons at the restaurant in order to avoid anyone taking pictures of the First Lady and her children.  That’s awful.  If the First Lady does not want pictures of her or her children taken by people around them, she should avoid public places.  There are no laws against having a cell phone in a restaurant (although sometimes there should be!).  This oversteps the basic rights of people out innocently eating in a restaurant.  I wonder what would have happened if anyone had refused to turn their cell phone over.